Presswatch

All-change at the top for PeopleSoft

PeopleSoft founder David Duffield has relinquished the job of chief executive to president Craig Conway, formalising the newcomer's role in leading the software company's turnaround effort. PeopleSoft, once one of the fastest-growing software companies, has been struggling to cope with sluggish demand and some of its miscues. Conway joined the company in May after a stint at several other software companies, including rival Oracle. Duffield acknowledged that PeopleSoft's problems were severe enough that he had considered options this year that included selling the company.

Wall Street Journal Interactive, 22 September

Intel boss dismisses appeal of interactive TV

Andy Grove, chairman and founder of Intel, told a conference in London that interactive television services were doomed. Grove said it was impossible to do anything 'truly interactive' with a television set. He added that the TV's appeal as PCs eventually being given away free would further damage a gateway to the Internet. Grove believes that banks will give them to customers who promise to do business with them for a set period. Intel has now switched its focus away from PCs to making chips for Internet server computers.

The Times, 22 September

Carly cashes in with Hewlett-Packard pay package

Hewlett-Packard has defended giving its new chief executive Carly Fiorina, a stock and options package worth up to $90 million (£57m), making her one of the world's best-paid businesswomen. Miss Fiorina, 44, is the first woman to head a Dow Jones Industrial Average company. The company confirmed that she should receive $80 million to $90 million from options and restricted stock over three to five years. She also receives a $3 million signing-on fee, $1m annual salary, and a bonus of between $1.25 million and $3.75 million. A spokeswoman said the package replaces stock and options Fiorina gave up when she left her previous employer, Lucent. "Whether or not she is better off depends on how well she proceeds," said the spokeswoman.

Fiorina still falls some way short of the US's best-paid male chief executives. For example, Disney's Michael Eisner received $576 million last year.

The Daily Telegraph, 24 September

Ballmer slams share prices, and feels the backlash

Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, erased $1.2 billion (£760m) from his personal fortune last week when he said Microsoft shares were overvalued.

His comments, part of a sweeping criticism of what he sees as 'absurd' valuations in the US technology sector, also fuelled an overall decline in US stocks. Microsoft's shares fell nearly $5 to just over $91 after his comments. Ballmer holds about 240 million Microsoft shares, valued at about $22 billion.

The Times, 24 September

Computers are fine, but we all need the human touch

Computers can automate routine transactions and email can transmit routine information, but face-to-face contact is still what adds value: the new ideas, the motivation, the decision to take a risk on a new vendor or a new product or a new idea ... As more of life gets automated away or rendered artificial, the more we will value the real - the chance encounter with a stranger, the live animals of another continent, a foreign city's streets at dusk. For users and for business, this means technology does not replace the real world, it supplements it. Ecommerce creates demand for better physical logistics systems ... The email contacts didn't click until the dinner. But we wouldn't be able to follow up without the email.

Esther Dyson writing in The Guardian Online, 23 September

Just play me some of that rock 'n' roll music ...

Digital music delivery may do for the recording industry what rock 'n' roll did in the mid-1950s: empower a new generation of independent producers and break up the global oligopoly, according to George Geis, an information systems professor at the University of California Los Angeles. By establishing a direct link between artist and consumer, Internet distribution could make redundant many of the functions of today's vertically integrated music groups. Manufacturing, shipping, group management and even marketing could fall out of the industry's established value chain. In five years the Internet could account for about seven per cent of the domestic market, and 16 per cent of those sales would be of recordings downloaded to computer hard disks or other playback devices. The evolution of the industry was likely to be an 'emotional' affair, he added.

Financial Times, 23 September

- Some stories have been edited for length.